PECOS — For Joe Keese, nothing had been out of the ordinary about that Wednesday last December. A teacher from the nearby elementary school had stopped by the Chamber of Commerce to pick up some stickers for her classroom, which Keese, then the chamber’s president, helped with. As the clock neared 5 o’clock, the chamber’s administrator tidied up for the day in the neighboring office — then she looked out the window.
“Is that a rocket?” she asked.
Keese, looking more closely, realized the massive object his administrator had mistaken for a rocket was a demethanizer tower, used for processing natural gas, on the bed of a motionless truck at a railroad crossing. And just beyond it, a freight train rode full-speed in its direction.
